Big Picture Science

Carbon dioxide is more than an industrial pollutant driving climate change. The gas also played a pivotal part in the dramatic story of the beginning of all life. Starting in the ocean depths, dissolved CO2 commingled in a turbulent mix of chemicals heated by hydrothermal vents may have kickstarted carbon-based life. As the planet’s thermostat, carbon dioxide has taken the Earth on wild temperature swings, from sweltering toxic hothouses that drove mass extinctions to the frigid Snowball Earth from which early life barely escaped. With life’s growing complexity, CO2’s role evolved. Exhaled by animals and enlisted by plants in photosynthesis, the gas eventually earned its discordant reputation when belched by industrial chimneys. Now, burning fossil fuels have us playing with fire as we test the limit of our stable climate upon which human civilization has flourished. 

Guest: 

Peter Brannen – science journalist and author of  “The Story of CO2 is the Story of Everything; How Carbon Dioxide Made Our World.”  

You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support! 

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact [email protected] to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science. 

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How did scientists learn to peer inside the atom? In this preview from the BBC's In Our Time, physicist Harry Cliff tells the story of the birth of the particle accelerator, from Ernest Rutherford's challenge to unlock the secrets of matter to the race to build the first machines capable of doing it.

Featuring homemade high-voltage experiments, scientific rivalry, and one memorable encounter involving a dead rat and a lot of electricity, it's a fascinating glimpse into the early days of modern particle physics.
In Our Time delivers a world-class seminar, every week. From Philosophy to Physics, Pre-Raphaelites to Pharaohs, each week Misha Glenny is joined by a team of expert guests to discuss the ideas, people and events that have shaped our world.

If you enjoy what you hear, find In Our Time, from the BBC, wherever you get your podcasts.

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Telescopes are like light buckets. The bigger the telescope, the more light collected for astronomers to observe. With recent advances in technology, amateur astronomers can join professionals for a chance to observe stellar nurseries and exoplanets many light-years away. But as our capabilities increase, so do the mysteries, including those around high-energy bursts coming from an otherwise unremarkable part of the universe. Understanding fast radio bursts could turn physics on its head.

From the Vera Rubin Telescope in Chile to the backyard instruments of amateur astronomers, we share what new things we might learn about stars, the Earth, exoplanets, and the potential for life on other worlds.

Guests:

Clare Higgs – Astronomer working with the public outreach team for the Vera Rubin Observatory

Franck Marchis – Senior astronomer and director of citizen science at the SETI Institute, chief science officer and co-founder of Unistellar

Amanda Cook – Postdoctoral fellow at McGill University and member of the CHIME/FRB Collaboration

Descripción en español

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support!

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact [email protected] to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

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We admire the ornamental beauty of flowers in a garden, but those blooms are more than lush color. The seemingly fragile, delicate petals are part of a resilient, adaptive innovation that arrived on the scene 250 million years ago and transformed life on the planet. Much life, including us, would not have evolved without flowering planets. Yet the power of the petal is often overlooked. How does our perspective on nature’s web change if we give flowers the credit they deserve? Celebrated biologist David Haskell shares the story of how nature’s revolutionaries evolved their vibrant hues and intoxicating scents to lure bees, butterflies and other animals into cooperative partnerships. 

Guest:

David George Haskell – biologist, professor at Emory University, and author of “How Flowers Made Our World: The Story of Nature’s Revolutionaries"

You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support!

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact [email protected] to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

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Breakthroughs around the detection of cosmic neutrinos — the “ghost” particles that may reveal why matter, not antimatter, fills the universe — recently earned a physicist the Nobel Prize in Physics. But one group of  neutrino hunters isn’t waiting for supernovae to churn up these high-energy particles. A massive new experiment that spans three states will create neutrinos and fire them into liquid argon to better understand their mysterious behavior. And after the better part of a century, scientists may finally have glimpsed the primary component of nearly all matter: dark matter. Are we close to understanding what it is? Finally, we glimpse the proton-smashing at the Large Hadron Collider as it hints at undiscovered physics and puts a stress test on the Standard Model.  

Guests: 

Kate Shaw – experimental particle physicist at the University of Sussex who works on the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment, DUNE  

Kimberly Palladino – astrophysicist, professor of physics at the University of Oxford, and the project scientist for LUX- ZEPLIN an international collaboration searching for dark matter  

Harry Cliff – particle physicist at the University of Cambridge and a researcher with the LHCb experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN  

You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support! 

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact [email protected] to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science. 

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A growing online movement of sunscreen skeptics believes that sunblock is toxic, even suggesting that it might cause skin cancer. Medical experts, concerned by rising skin cancer rates, are rushing to push back against these claims. Meanwhile, new research suggests that too little sunlight could be detrimental to health and links it to some cardiovascular disease and cancer. How do we navigate through the darkness of these seemingly conflicting messages about sunlight? We enter the slippery world of skin care to break down the science of sunlight and sunscreen and uncover some surprising effects that UV rays have on our bodies.  

Guests: 

Brian Underwood – journalist and Beauty and Grooming Director of Men’s Health and Women’s Health, and author of the article, The Anti-Sunscreen Movement is Coming for You  

Rowan Jacobsen – science writer and the author of “In Defense of Sunlight”  

Dr. Michelle Henry – cosmetic dermatologist and dermatologic surgeon, Clinical Instructor of Dermatology at Weill Cornell Medical College 

You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support! 

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact [email protected] to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

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Healthy rivers and riparian ecosystems are teaming with life, but should rivers themselves be considered alive? The question is central to the growing rights-of-nature movement that claims that ecosystems and entities, like rivers, have legal rights. After Ecuador enshrined the rights of nature in its constitution, lawyers employed the new personhood status to stop mining companies from clearing a section of the Los Cedros River and its surrounding biodiverse cloud forest. Granting rivers moral standing comes as over-damming, pollution, and climate change have put them in crisis globally. Writer Robert Macfarlane explores how seeing rivers as living beings rather than just resources – a change he calls “a great act of moral imagination” – could help save our watersheds and rivers, upon which all life depends.   

Guest: 

Robert Macfarlane – Writer and Professor of Literature and Environmental Humanities at the University of Cambridge, and author of “Is a River Alive?” 

Originally posted June 23, 2025

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake 

You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support! 

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact [email protected] to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science. 

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Extreme heat is taking its toll on the natural world. We use words like “heat domes” and “freakish” to describe our everyday existence. These high temperatures aren’t only uncomfortable - they are lethal to humans, animals, and crops. In search of an answer to our episode’s question, we discuss the dilemma of an ever-hotter world with an author who has covered climate change for more than twenty years. 

Guest: 

Jeff Goodell – author of “The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet.” 

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake 

Originally aired October 2, 2023 

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact [email protected] to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science. 

You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support! 

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A new space telescope will soon give us an expanded field of view of some of the strangest phenomena in the cosmos. The launch of NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will initiate this instrument’s contributions to the understanding of black holes, dark matter, and dark energy. It will also further the search for exoplanets. The project’s principal and deputy investigators join us to describe the telescope’s science goals, and astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson provides his big picture view of the most exciting recent discoveries in astronomy and cosmology.  

Guests: 

Julie McEnery – Astrophysicist at the Goddard Space Flight Center and senior project scientist for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.  

Jason Rhodes – JPL project scientist for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, focusing on dark energy, dark matter, and cosmic evolution.  

Neil deGrasse Tyson – Astrophysicist and director of New York City’s Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History, and author of "Lost in Space: 5,000 Facts for Navigating the Universe".  

Anna de Graaff – Astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy   

You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support! 

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact [email protected] to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science. 

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The abrupt defunding of USAID in 2025 caused global shockwaves. The cuts thrust recipient countries who were dependent on foreign aid for medical care into health crises. One area that has been particularly hard hit is Malawi, a country in southeastern Africa where doctors and community organizers are struggling to fill the gaps in essential services left in the wake of the USAID cuts. The loss of local outreach clinics and lack of fuel for ambulances has caused severe delays—and sometimes tragic outcomes—in providing care to mothers and children. A year out from the cuts, we look at how Malawi is rethinking its relationship to foreign aid as it considers how to continue providing vital health services. 

In the first of a series supported by the nonprofit Pulitzer Center and in collaboration with Science Magazine, we provide an on-the-ground look at the impact of USAID defunding on health services in key spots across the globe.  

Guests:  

Catherine Offord – journalist, Science Magazine. Her article, “An Uncertain Path,” appeared in the July 16 issue of the magazine  

Voices heard in the show:  

Fanizo Simenti – community health worker at Katenje Health Post, Kasungu district  

Emily Mvula – former recipient of services provided by USAID MOMENTUM  

Issah Omar Nicks – nursing officer overseeing the maternity ward at the Makiyoni Health Center, Salima District  

Aran Nkhata – medical clinician in charge of Makiyoni Health Center, Salima District  

Flywell Elenesto – cold chain technician for Salima District, Malawi  

Sungeni Thole – nurse midwife technician at Makiyoni Health Center, Salima District  

Anthony Masamba – MP and chair of The Parliamentary Committee on Health  

Show theme by Jun Miyake. Episode image by Thoko Chikondi. 

You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support! 

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact [email protected] to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science. 

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